To follow a vegan diet, you should eat fruits, veggies, grains, nuts, seeds, and legumes. Animal goods, like meat and gelatine and rennet made from meat, are off limits to vegans. Vegans also don’t eat fish, shellfish, dairy, eggs, or foods that contain them. Vegans don’t eat honey either.
Getting a healthy vegan diet is possible with some planning and knowledge, no matter how long you’ve been a vegan or how new you are to the lifestyle.
Top 10 health benefits of a vegan diet
1. May support weight loss
Some people are driven to switch to a plant-based diet because they want to lose a few pounds. A study in the US looked at the nutritional value of different foods and found that a balanced vegan diet has the lowest total energy intake, the healthiest fats, and the most dietary fibre compared to both omnivore and lacto-ovo-vegetarian diets. Eating more fibre makes meals fill you up longer, which may make you less likely to snack and help you better understand when you’re hungry.
Other research backs up the idea that vegans are generally smaller and have a lower body mass index (BMI). A low-fat vegan diet helped people lose 4.2 kg more than a baseline diet over the course of 18 weeks in one study. Another benefit is that a vegan diet naturally has fewer calories, so you don’t have to worry about counting calories or watching your portions.
2. May support heart health
A diet full of vegan-friendly foods like whole grains, beans, fruit, and vegetables is linked to a lower risk of heart disease and stroke.
3. May lower blood pressure and cholesterol
People who eat a meatless or vegan diet tend to have lower blood pressure and better control of their cholesterol.
Male vegans seem to get even more heart health benefits, as a number of heart risk factors go down significantly.
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4. May support blood sugar balance
People who have problems with their blood sugar may feel better if they follow a wholefood vegan diet. People who eat a vegan diet tend to be more sensitive to insulin and have lower blood sugar levels. As a result, they are less likely to get type 2 diabetes. Part of the reason for this is that a wholefood vegan diet naturally includes a lot of foods that are low in glycaemic index (GI) and high in dietary fibre.
Adding whole grains to your diet helps keep blood sugar stable because they slow digestion and create a physical barrier. In contrast, refined grains, like white bread, pasta, and rice, and even “wholemeal” foods have been ground or processed, which speeds up processing and the release of their carbs. Lots of whole carbs should be a part of your meals if you want to get the blood sugar benefits of a vegan diet.
5. May reduce the risk of diabetes complications
Because vegan diets tend to have less saturated fat and more phytonutrients from fruits and vegetables that protect cells, they are in line with current dietary advice for people with diabetes. But if you have type 2 diabetes and/or are taking medicine for it, talk to your doctor or a nurse before making big changes to the way you eat.
6. May reduce the risk of certain cancers
Over the next few decades, the number of reported cancer cases is likely to rise. This rise is thought to be caused in part by lifestyle choices like food, exercise, and being overweight. Researchers have found that the risk of getting cancer goes down when you eat more plant-based foods like fruits, veggies, and legumes and less smoked or processed red meat.
Researchers who have looked into the effects of plant-based diets seem to agree that a well-balanced vegan diet is the best way to lower your chance of all types of cancer.
7. May be beneficial for gut health
The group of microbes that live in your digestive track includes bacteria, yeast, and viruses. This group is called your gut microbiome. We are learning more about this important group of microbes, and we now know that it affects our health, how we feel, and how we think. It seems that we can quickly and effectively change our gut bacteria for the better by changing the foods we eat.
Studies have shown that eating a variety of plant-based foods can quickly and positively change our gut microbiome. This makes the good bacteria grow and increases the number of different types of microbes that live there. This is because when we eat a lot of plant-based foods that are high in different kinds of fibre, we feed the bacteria in our guts, which helps them grow and multiply.
The more different foods you eat, the more diverse your microbiome is, and the better it can fight disease. This is important because a loss of species variety is linked to a number of disease outcomes.
8. May be anti-inflammatory
A diet full of antioxidant-rich whole foods, like a lot of different kinds of fruits and veggies, and lower in foods that cause inflammation may help people with conditions like rheumatoid arthritis and osteoarthritis.
9. May support healthy skin
Studies that look at populations have found a link between eating more fruits and veggies, which are common in vegan diets, and better skin health. These foods have a lot of flavonoids, which are plant-defense chemicals, and vitamins C and E, which are important for skin health. There may be more benefits for skin diseases like acne, psoriasis, atopic dermatitis, and skin that is getting older.
10. High scoring for nutritional quality
People who eat wholefood vegan diets, which include enriched foods, tend to be healthier because they contain a lot of dietary fibre and a lot of foods that are high in folate, vitamins C and E, and minerals like potassium and magnesium.
Vegetarian meals tend to be very healthy because they are high in fruits and vegetables and low in salt and saturated fat.